FZ-1a on Vero with -1.5vdc power supply

[timbo_93631]

I started on this build at the beginning of the summer and it has been a long haul.  The enclosure is from Pedalenclosures.com and it didn't ever ship, after a month of waiting I emailed and got it about 2 weeks later.  No big deal, but maybe some foreshadowing of things to come.  After that I started trying to do the power supply and circuit on the same bit of vero using some pretty standard charge pump arrangements and regulators before or after the polarity conversion as well as voltage divider networks etc. to get the voltage down to -1.5v but everything had hum, oscillations, ripple and other problems that way.  So I went to the breadboard, just trying to get the supply right and after studying the datasheets and then seeing how some other charge pumped PNP projects are laid out and how that corresponded to the example schematics in the datasheets I got to a much more stable design.  I'm going to try and learn Eagle so I can contribute this info to the member's projects section of the forum soon, all my work is on graph paper right now.  The FZ-1a circuit itself is not complicated, but I chose to audit a bunch of transistors on the breadboard to get it to work right with the stock schematic instead of biasing things to accommodate individual transistors.  Over the course of the summer I had been setting aside leaky transistors for this and in the end the best set was a leaky Amperex 2N2430 in Q1, a not-very-leaky-at-all Texas Instruments 2N404 with highish gain in Q2, and a super leaky Mullard OC75 in Q3.  Sounds cool.  Bunch of bunk attempts:



The winner on the breadboard:

[timbo_93631]

[Bret608]

Ah, you played it with one of those awesome delays you just did! Sounds great together.

I had wondered about Pedal Enclosures. I was thinking about getting one of these for my Supafuzz, but their website is, like, different now. There's no contact information that I can easily locate. There used to be some language about simple drilling being available, but that's gone too. Did you feel they were responsive when you contacted them?

[timbo_93631]

It took a couple of tries to get ahold of them, but the owner made good saying they had changed their cart software and the computer had lost track of my order.  He sent it out about a week later, took another week to get to me.  If you click on the pic of one of the scrolling pictures on the upper right of their page you can land on the ordering page of that enclosure type and then in the bottom right corner there are links to the others.  I personally won't order another one unless I am building a pedal for someone and they specifically ask for that enclosure.  For a steel enclosure there are these ones on ebay which look pretty nice if you want a big honking box:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/60s-Reissue-Pedal-Enclosure-Fuzz-Project-Box-UNDRILLED-Made-in-USA-RI-Superfuzz-/320805567820?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item4ab1807d4c

[lincolnic]

Excellent build. I want one!

[Cortexturizer]

I love all kinds of builds posted on the forum, but for some reason I love builds like these best!
Such a joy when things fall into place, you get it sounding right, and looking right, and then just stomp on it and melt faces. Nothing more fun than a nicely made vintage fuzz replica, cheers!

[hoodoo]

Very nice mate, inside and out, i'm always impressed by these oldschool looking, mojo filled builds, very cool,  all the best, Matt.